Driving along and twiddling the radio dial on Sunday night, I caught this tantalising snippet: "In Madrid, demonstrators took to the streets to protest the Iraqi election." I'm fairly blasé about European decadence these days - I barely raised an eyebrow at the news that an unemployed waitress in Berlin faces the loss of her welfare benefits because she's refused to take a job as a prostitute in a legalised brothel - but, even so, it surely couldn't be true that the Spaniards so objected to the Iraqi election that they were protesting about it.

But apparently so. Hard to tell how many there were from the Reuters snap: it was shot fairly close up, the way sympathetic photographers do when they want to make a rally look bigger than it is.

But nevertheless there they were, prosperous, well-dressed Spaniards waving placards showing US missiles and dollar bills going into the ballot box and noisily objecting to the fraud of a so-called election held under American occupation.

Prosecutors didn't have enough to work with, down to just one witness who could testify against the defrocked former priest. And now it seems to hinge on whether jurors will buy the concept of repressed memories.

Beyond that, we're talking about a Cambridge jury here, a town always ready to side with perps whenever an excuse can be cooked up.

Let's hope and pray that justice catches up with Paul Shanley.

(Boston Herald)CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Prosecutors wrapped up their case against defrocked priest Paul Shanley on Monday after a psychologist testified that it's not uncommon for adults who suffer trauma as children to repress memories of the experience.

Shanley's accuser, now a 27-year-old firefighter, says he remembered in early 2002 that he'd been repeatedly raped and molested by the former priest from 1983 to 1989 at a Newton parish. Shanley's lawyer has questioned the science behind repressed memory, also known as dissociative amnesia.

The condition is ``not common, but it's not at all rare,'' said prosecution witness Dr. James Chu, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School.

He said repressed memory is more common among people who suffered repeated trauma as children than in those who suffered a single traumatic event.

``It really is more this repeated trauma that tends to be forgotten by some mechanism,'' Chu said.

The survey, led by Phil Howard of the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, asked people in five Central Coast counties what kind of information they would like to have when buying food. The U.S. Department of Agriculture funded the project.

Food safety and nutrition topped the list. Consumers also wanted to know how animals are treated, the impact producing food has on the environment and whether the people who produce food earn a living wage.

"We found a surprising amount of support for ethical aspects of food," Howard said. "That people are interested in safety is not new. We didnt know about their concern for social justice and humane treatment of animals."

Consumers also said information about environmental issues and the welfare of food-industry workers was hard to find. "They would like to have more of that information available at the store where they are making decisions about what to purchase," Howard said.

Eighty percent of those surveyed liked the idea of labels or store displays that provide more information. Howard asked people to rank five potential food labels, which he called "eco-labels." The most popular was a "humane label," which would certify that products, such as milk, eggs or meat, came from humanely treated animals. Labels that identified locally grown products and those produced by workers who earned "above poverty wages" are also popular.

Democrats are in a race to revive old, dead bills from past sessions that now have a strong chance of passing with their party in control of both legislative chambers and the governorship, at least for now.

The speed at which they try to pass these bills will tell you whether they are worried that their phony governor may come tumbling down.

On the agenda- making it easier to pass tax increases, gay rights, gun control, you name it:

(Seattle Times)OLYMPIA — Like jilted lovers with newfound hope, Democrats this year are pushing legislation that always died in past sessions.

Familiar bills that would allow the purchase of drugs from Canada, provide equal insurance coverage for mental-health patients, let school levies pass with a simple majority and ban discrimination against gays are on the roll.

It's all a sign of Democrats controlling the House, the governor's office and especially the Senate, which had been in Republican hands the past two years. Gov. Christine Gregoire has indicated support for many of the measures.

"Everybody whose bill died for the last two years figures it's their turn," said Rep. Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish.

What to do when you're the Democrat Party leadership, devoid of actual ideas and having been clobbered in the last election?

Apparently, you just keep doing things the same way: more Bush-bashing, more mindless, idea-less harping on Iraq and more of the same "leadership" that got their party into its current state of affairs.

Do Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid really think this kind of talk will help to reverse their fortunes? How to find a way for our troops to exit with dignity? What kind of a statement is that?

In remarks at the National Press Club, Reid said that Sunday's elections in Iraq marked "a first step in helping figure out a way that the U.S. can get out of Iraq ... We have to figure out a way to remove ourselves from there with dignity."

Pelosi spoke dismissively of the reception Bush is likely to receive from GOP lawmakers on Wednesday night in the first State of the Union address of his second term. "You really don't have to have very good communication skills if you have a couple of hundred people who will jump to their feet when you recite the ABCs," she said.

"What the president says, the president will be held accountable for," she added.

Together, she and Reid sought to lay down markers on issues likely to dominate the congressional agenda this year -- Iraq and the broader war on terror, as well as Social Security.

Republicans countered not long after the two Democratic leaders finished speaking.

"Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid's obstructionist remarks today were full of pessimism and personal attacks but lacked any vision for winning the war on terror or preserving Social Security for future generations," said Brian Jones, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.

Gloating or Celebrating?

What a day! Watching the national news media, on television and radio, pound into the ground the idea that it was too soon to call the Iraqi election a success.

On ABC radio it was characterized as a slightly better-than-expected turnout. On NBC, a story about a particular polling place with no voters for hours, with little effort made to put it in context of the successful nationwide turnout.

A caller to Rush Limbaugh's show claimed that each ethnic group had a sinister reason for voting or not voting that would lead to an inevitable civil war. And to top it off yours truly was accused of gloating about the turnout by at least one blogger.

It seemed as though John Kerry had issued the talking points memo yesterday in his Meet the Press interview and his minions happily parroted the party line.

There are some very angry liberals out there who were sure it was going to be chaos in the streets yesterday and we can expect more lashing out in the days and weeks to come.

30 January 2005

AP now reports Iraqi voter turnout may be as high as 72%! It must be like a morgue in the newsrooms tonight.

Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and Jim McDermott have never looked more foolish in their entire lives. Teddy needs medical treatment, Kerry should resign immediately after his stupid comments today and McDermott should stay right where he is-- helping Republicans raise money.

BAGHDAD, Iraq- An Iraqi election official said Sunday that 72 percent of eligible Iraqi voters had turned out so far nationwide.

Al-Lami said the percentage of registered voters who had gone to the polls in some Baghdad neighborhoods was as high as 95 percent.

Iraqi officials had predicted that up to eight million of 14 million eligible voters - just over 57 percent - will turn out for Sunday's election to choose a National Assembly and governing councils in the 18 provinces.

(The Republican Newspaper via MassLive)AMHERST - Are the images that now cover the walls outside Hampden Gallery at the University of Massachusetts campus obscene, thought-provoking, crude or ingenious?

Some people cannot get past the naked forms in various acts of sex and violence. For others, the drawings in black marker by Austrian artist Heimo Wallner tell a story of society, filled with everything from violence, love, weapons and fame to pop music, torture, virtue and drugs. And for some, it's hard to understand or process the hundreds of figures and their actions.

"I haven't decided if I like it or I don't," said Nick J. Stevens, a junior from Athol who took a few minutes yesterday to look at the mural. "When I first looked at it, it was a little pervasive. But as I look at it more it makes more sense. It's OK with me. I can understand why it wouldn't be OK with other people."

Genitalia are featured prominently in the mural as Wallner comments, sometimes humorously, on pornography and power, sports and fame, the college party scene, the president and cowboys and Indians, hunting, the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the exploitation of women, education and psychoanalysis.

Wallner began his mural Jan. 21. Wallner was invited to the campus as a visiting artist through a $1,200 grant from the UMass Arts Council and private funding. Line Bruntse and Steven Buddington, assistant professors of art, worked on the grant.

``Now I feel that Saddam is really gone,'' she said, smiling as she headed home.

Ibrahim was 14 and a bride of just three months when the Iraqi dictator had her husband, father and brother rounded up in a campaign of ethnic cleansing in the northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan. That was 22 years and two Iraq wars ago and they have never been heard from again.

Now 35, the black-clad woman had come to the school-turned-polling station with the mother-in-law and sister-in-law who are all that remains of her family. ``Taking part in the elections is in a way like taking my revenge from Saddam,'' she said. It was ``like embracing my love, my brother and my father.''

MMAN, Jordan, Jan. 30 - Sometime after the first insurgent attack in Iraq this morning, news directors at Arab satellite channels and newspaper editors found themselves facing an altogether new decision: should they report on the violence, or continue to cover the elections themselves?

After close to two years of providing up-to-the-minute images of explosions and mayhem, and despite months of predictions of a bloodbath on election day, some news directors said they found the decision surprisingly easy to make.The violence simply was not the story this morning; the voting was.

Overwhelmingly, Arab channels and newspapers greeted the elections as a critical event with major implications for the region, and many put significant resources into reporting on the vote, providing blanket coverage throughout the country that started about a week ago. Newspapers kept wide swaths of their pages open, and the satellite channels dedicated most of the day to coverage of the polls.

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP)  Whoever wins the legal challenge to the governor's election, the citizens of Washington will pay.

In fact, they're already paying.

The state expects to spend about $200,000 of taxpayer money on private lawyers defending the Secretary of State's office.

And every county auditor and prosecutor is spending thousands of taxpayer dollars in staff time to respond to the Republicans' lawsuit challenging the 129-vote victory of Gov. Christine Gregoire. Some say the lawsuit is bleeding resources from other areas of government.

No word about the bleeding that took place during eight years of Gary Locke allowing state agencies to become bloated beyond recognition, or the millions lost in the State Attorney General's office due to Christine Gregoire's incompetence.

Were you as inspired as I was by the images of Iraqis ignoring threats and voting in large numbers? Must be a sad day at the Kerry and Kennedy compounds.

Washington readers, remember the Seattle radio personality who visited Iraq and wrote an essay claiming Iraqis really didn't want freedom (something he apparently determined by talking to the maids, bellhops and room service help)? How about a free lifetime membership in the Kerry/Kennedy Sore Loser Club?

WASHINGTON --Even with widespread violence in Iraq, voters there showed a passion for democracy by apparently turning out in numbers comparable to a typical election in the United States.

Iraqi officials said turnout among the 14 million eligible Iraqi voters appeared higher than the 57 percent that had been predicted, although it would be some time before any turnout figure was confirmed.

In the United States, turnout hovered in the low 50 percent range for years and only this year squeaked to 60 percent.

Considering that Iraqis voted in dangerous conditions, and Americans don't, the turnout numbers speak volumes, according to some pollsters.

"When public expression means so much to you that you will vote under the threat of death, that is significant," said Frank Luntz, a pollster who often works for Republicans. "That demonstrates how much they want democracy."

A successful election, as well as it could be expected anyway, has got to be giving the Dems and American news media heartburn today. A miniscule turnout would have fulfilled their wildest fantasies, but that is not going to be the case today:

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the Iraqi elections are "going better than expected" Sunday, despite conflicting reports about the extent of voter turnout in areas plagued by intimidation and violence.

"Every indication is that the election in Iraq is going better than expected," Rice said on ABC's "This Week."

Rice praised the bravery of Iraqi voters and acknowledged "there are going to be many, many difficult days ahead."

(AP) Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. Central Command, left, chairman of the Senate Armed Services...
Full Image

"What we are seeing here is the emergence of an Iraqi voice of freedom," Rice said in the first response to the election from the Bush administration.

Mike Fancher, Seattle Times Executive Editor, deals with the question today, addressing a common complaint about the paper. Are Seattle Times Company newspaper readers in Washington State and Maine getting "independent" journalism?

(Seattle Times)The reader pointed out this column often uses the term "independent newspaper," but he doesn't recall "reading any benefits for this other than allowing the Blethen family to use the paper to broadcast its views by hiring writers who share their beliefs." He added that's what is done with other national newspapers, "so I do not understand the harping on the independent paper issue."

I asked a handful of people in the newsroom to consider the question, and came up with an array of responses. I told them I wouldn't quote them individually, but would aggregate their comments. Here goes:

Independent, as we use it, means freedom from control or influence of others. It applies whether we're talking about the relationship of the press to government or the ability of journalists to do their work without pressure from any special interest.

Given the hardball tactics the Blethens have used both internally in Washington and Maine newsrooms and their respective communities, I'll take "corporate" journalism any time over the "independent" variety. Besides, how are the terms defined and what do they really mean?

The Times has recently been announcing waves of layoffs, do you really believe anybody in the newsroom will speak openly about editorial pressure? How much comes from Frank Blethen or from editors and staffers?

Why are the stories always about what liberals are about to do, or might do?

How about a story after they resettle in Canada? Perhaps because it's all hot air? There's a big difference between flying a Maple Leaf flag in your front yard (which wouldn't stand out too much in Seattle anyway) and packing up the moving truck for British Columbia.

Did we leave the country when Clinton was President for eight long years?

Something else needs to be explored: do Canadians really want our malcontents? British Columbia really isn't that liberal except in some city pockets and rural areas where hippies settled long ago. Alberta is a red province all the way. The massive numbers of recent Asian immigrants to BC sure don't strike me as very left-wing politically.

At their home in a comfortable, quiet Seattle suburb, Mike Teller and his partner, Bob Vesely, did not cheer on Jan. 20. While the celebratory thousands lined the streets for the presidential inauguration 3,000 miles away, Teller and Vesely were thinking of their future and the greener pastures they believe await them. They were thinking of escape.

The clue to their getaway destination flies from a pole in front of their house -- a Canadian flag. "We used to fly the U.S. flag, but we changed it to a Canadian flag at the start of the Iraq war," says Vesely, 45, an IT manager. "It was our protest."

If the couple get their way, before too long they will swap the Stars and Stripes for the red and white maple-leaf pennant -- the national flag of Canada -- that now flutters in the breeze outside their home. Having toyed with the idea for many months, Teller and Vesely recently decided to move to Canada. They made their decision on the morning of Nov. 3, the day after the American presidential election. And they are not alone. Even before the election, there were many people vowing that they would leave the country if President Bush was re-elected.

A day after he begged a judge not to make him return to court, the man accusing defrocked priest Paul Shanley of raping him as a child finished testifying yesterday, but defense lawyers are preparing to challenge his claim that he recovered memories of the alleged abuse nearly 20 years after he says it occurred.

Next week, the defense will call Elizabeth Loftus, a University of California at Irvine psychologist frequently paid to testify as an expert about what she has called the ``myth'' of repressed memory.

The alleged victim, a 27-year-old firefighter and former military police officer, claims Shanley repeatedly molested him between the ages of 6 and 12 while he was a Sunday school student at St. Jean's parish in Newton, but says he buried any memory of the abuse until he began having flashbacks in 2002.

An hour before serial killer Michael Ross was scheduled to be executed this morning in Connecticut, state officials postponed the lethal injection after Ross's lawyer said he had a conflict of interest, which he declined to explain. Connecticut officials rescheduled the execution -- the first in New England in 45 years -- for Monday at 9 p.m.

T.R. Paulding, hired by Ross last year to help expedite his execution, said he had requested the delay, not Ross.

''The request made by Mr. Paulding today is appropriate and we have no choice but to honor it," Chief State's Attorney Christopher Morano said.

Officials would not discuss the suspected conflict, but the decision came just hours after a federal judge scolded Paulding for helping Ross end his life.

''I see this happening and I can't live with it myself, which is why I'm on the phone right now," Chief US District Judge Robert Chatigny said in a telephone conference yesterday afternoon with Paulding, according to court records. ''What you are doing is terribly, terribly wrong."

1. If there was to be a revote for Governor, would you vote for Dino Rossi, the Republican or Christine Gregoire, the Democrat?

01/28

Christine Gregoire

43%

Dino Rossi

51%

Undecided

6%

2. Regardless of who you voted for in November's gubernatorial election, who do you believe actually won the gubernatorial election, Democrat Christine Gregoire or Republican Dino Rossi?

01/28

Christine Gregoire

37%

Dino Rossi

53%

Undecided

10%

This is just a small bit of the information available on their site. Click here for considerably more detail.

Yes, Strategic Vision is a Republican polling agency, in that it works primarily for Republican office-seekers or holders but is not officially connected to the GOP.

If these numbers are even close to accurate (and I think they are) then Christine Gregoire and the Democrats are in trouble.

Even if they can legally hang on to the governorship, what damage might they be doing to their future prospects in the state? Is their nasty attitude about the situation the best recruiting tool the Washington State GOP has had in decades?

How sad, bureaucrats have extra work to do! The article's tone is clear: the GOP has clobbered local officials with an overwhelming workload. Are Republicans nothing but vindictive sore losers?

(Seattle Times) Counties across the state are having trouble keeping up with the massive amount of paperwork and research involved in the Republican Party's lawsuit against the state's 39 counties, their auditors and Secretary of State Sam Reed. The state party and Dino Rossi, who lost the governor's race to Christine Gregoire by 129 votes in a hand recount, argue the election was so flawed that the court should order a revote.

What is much less important to the Times (that's especially clear on the website) is this major revelation, underneath the whiney headline in small print:

The Rotterdam international film festival has pulled the last contentious work by Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh at the eleventh hour, amid fears that the screening might trigger further acts of religious violence. The short film, Submission Part One, was due to form the centrepiece of a debate on freedom of speech on Sunday night. It will now not be shown.

Submission Part One is a ten-minute film about a Muslim woman forced into an arranged marriage where she is beaten by her husband, raped by her uncle and finally accused of adultery. Explaining the decision to withdraw it, the film's producer Gijs van de Westelaken said: "We do not want to take any chance of endangering anyone else who participated in the film."

Theo Van Gogh was fatally shot and stabbed by an Islamist militant when cycling to work in Amsterdam on November 2 last year. A note pinned to his body referred to Submission Part One as the reason for the murder.

28 January 2005

The American Spectator's latest issue explores the real reasons behind the loss of population in Massachusetts, the only state contracting rather than expanding:

(The American Spectator)Massachusetts touts its universities and "highly educated" population and job market. But, as Garreau said, "Every one of those high rolling six digit jobs has to be supported by 20 people who make sandwiches, fix Xerox machines, etc. You can't do without those people."

SO HOW DID MASSACHUSETTS get this way? Easy. For at least 20 years, Boston and Beacon Hill pols have refused to vote for expanded airport capacity anywhere other than Logan Airport, which is (perversely) stuck right in the middle of Boston Harbor.

One of Joel Garreau's favorite conversational gambits explores the evolution of the nineteenth century city from the intersection of harbors and railroads. "Warehouses lead to whorehouses, whorehouses to a police force, a police force to courthouses." Voilà, civilization. "Blow it up seven or eight times, and you've got Boston or Paris."

But today's modern port is the airport. Massachusetts has a good one in the midstate city of Worcester, now pretty much a gentle joke in Commonwealth affairs. A new runway or two and expanded terminal capacity in Worcester, located directly west of Boston about 50 miles down the Mass Pike, would create the edges to open up Massachusetts' Boston-centered Scrabble cluster. Extend the suburban rail links to Worcester, and the state could blossom.

Now, get this story. This story comes today from the San Francisco Chronicle. At least that's where I found it. "Foreign Secretary Says Mexico May Ask International Courts to Block Proposition 200 -- Mexico may turn to international courts in efforts to block a new Arizona law limiting services to undocumented aliens, said Mexican foreign secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez. He said this on Wednesday on an interview on W radio, that Mexico might take such a step after it's exhausted all possibilities under US law to halt Prop 200." Now, these are not the first of these kinds of stories. It's just the latest, where the Mexican government is attacking the United States for enforcing our own immigration laws against its illegal citizens, entering our country illegally.

This actually occurred a week ago but seems to be picking up steam today on the Internet with this AP photo and caption. Pass the word around to your 'net friends. There's a discussion here.

By the way, the campus in question is one of the worst community colleges in the country, a depressing dump in the middle of the trashed, wino-and-junkie-filled Capitol Hill district in Seattle.

Thu Jan 20, 5:24 PM ET

Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Due, right, a U.S. Army recruiter, is surrounded by protesters at Seattle Central Community College, Thursday, Jan. 20, 2005, in Seattle. After about a 10-minute standoff during which protesters tore up U.S Army literature, the protesters were successful in getting Due and another recruiter to leave their table under escort by campus security officers. Several hundred students walked out of classes at several Seattle colleges and universities to protest the inauguration of President Bush (news - web sites). (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Gillette Co.'s plan to sell out to Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co. sent shockwaves through Boston's business community last night, as yet another Bay State corporate icon prepared to cede control to an out-of-state owner.

``I'm blown away,'' said Michael Goodman, an economist at the University of Massachusetts' Donahue Institute. ``It's an end of an era.''

In the past year, Boston has lost corporate control of its largest bank, its largest insurer, and now its largest consumer products maker. Gillette's sale is sure to raise more fears about reduced contributions to civic and cultural institutions and a general drying up of corporate philanthropy in the Hub.

Collin Levey has been a rare breath of fresh air in the Seattle media. It's hard to believe she's been tolerated this long by the Seattle Times. Maybe that "token conservative" label I know so well applies to her as well.

Here, however, the Gallagher/Williams cacophony has been more about painting the administration itself as untrustworthy. The story of payments to pundits quickly morphed into a larger discussion of whether the federal government should pay for public relations of any kind. Critics on Wednesday noted that the Bush administration had spent nearly double the amount of money on outside public relations last year than it had in the previous one.

This isn't exactly cloak-and-dagger stuff, so let's try to keep some focus. To be sure, in the Gallagher case, it was unseemly to discover a small-government proponent accepting checks written with taxpayer money — there is plenty of room to criticize her participation therein.

But being scandalized that a conservative columnist agreed publicly with a conservative administration is a little disingenuous.

Ultimately, however, of greater occasion for public concern is the deception or slant of news outlets that get their credibility from assumed objectivity. The revelations that CBS News had aired forged documents relating to George Bush's National Guard service was disastrous for the network and they knew it — heads rolled following the incident just as they had at The New York Times in the wake of Jayson Blair's fabrications.

Eyman's newest proposal, which hasn't been assigned a number yet, would require voter approval for any change to the initiative process.

Eyman has turned that process into a livelihood. He has succeeded, most notably, in cutting the motor vehicle excise tax in 1999 with Initiative 695. He's also failed, most recently, with a measure to cut property taxes and expand gambling.

Besides the "Hands off the People's Initiative" initiative, Eyman is pushing I-900, which calls for performance audits of every state and local government agency to ferret out waste and improve service.

To qualify an initiative for the November ballot, his organization must collect 225,014 signatures by July 8.

With the legislature in Demo control and the gubernatorial mess, Washington State needs Tim Eyman more than ever.

If this is the best Dick Cheney attack the media can come up with, Republicans must be in very good shape:

(AP)OSWIECIM, Poland -- Vice President Dick Cheney's utilitarian hooded parka and boots stood out amid the solemn formality of a ceremony commemorating the liberation of Nazi death camps, raising eyebrows among the fashion-conscious.

Cheney replaced the zipped-to-the-neck green parka he sported in Thursday's blowing snow and freezing wind with a more traditional black coat - red tie and gray scarf showing underneath - for his tour of Auschwitz on Friday.

Washington Post fashion writer Robin Givhan described Cheney's look at the deeply moving 60th anniversary service as "the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower."

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, center, is flanked by his wife Lynne, rigth, and Israel's President Moshe Katsav, left, when leaders from 30 countries gather to remember the victims of the Holocaust on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazis' Auschwitz death camp by Soviet troops in Oswiecim, southern Poland on Thursday, Jan. 27, 2005. (AP Photo/Herbert Knosowski)

My, a fashion crime! Time for impeachment! You wouldn't believe how much attention this is getting today.

Our friends at New England Republican have picked apart Teddy Kennedy's speech bit-by-bit. Who better to analyze him, than the people who know him best, in Massachusetts:

In my opinion this speech is nothing short of aiding and abetting the enemy. The Senator obviously does not care that his words will be used throughout the Middle East as evidence that we are an "occupying power". It is very similar to how Kerry didn't care how his words would be used by the North Vietnamese.

27 January 2005

Welcome new visitors from SoundPolitics. These are the hardest working guys in the blogosphere and if there ever is a revote in Washington State, it will be largely because of their research and activism.

Rosenblog is covering my original hometown of Santa Cruz a lot better than I have been, quite frankly, and he found a big issue in the Santa Cruz Sentinel- a tax on millionaires to fund mental health services:

(Rosenblog) Sticking millionaires with the cost of increased and new mental health care treatments, via a ballot proposition, strikes me as a particularly egregious form of political cowardice. Work it into the county budget or propose a more broadly distributed revenue measure? Nah, add a special income tax for the rich, that'll work.

It sets a crummy precedent. What happens next time the county board finds itself unable to muster up the courage to say no, or cut other services when faced with a perceived "need" for more social and health services? Another ballot measure to tax millionaires? I can't see any reason why not, now.

I also have questions about the mentally-ill population in Santa Cruz County. If you've ever hung out in the heart of downtown Santa Cruz, you'll know the vibe is set by armies of young vagrants, many in dreadlocks, congregating for free food and herbal companionship. I believe that after toking on several hundred fatties of BC Bud, many of them undoubtedly qualify as officially mentally ill. But it is largely their own doing.

Another point: since starter homes in Santa Cruz go for $600-700k and up these days, isn't just about every homeowner a "millionaire" in a way? How do you define the term?

Isn't that what the Dems are really saying? You didn't stop the fraud before the election, so you can't have a revote because you discovered illegal votes too late.

Is there any legal basis or was it the best counterstrategy the Washington State Democrats could concoct?

The Seattle media is busy portraying this as a "reform" issue to be fixed for 2006 or 2008 rather than a stolen election requiring a revote NOW. They're happy to see Christine Gregoire installed as Washington's governor and will undermine any revote effort.

TUKWILA  The state Republican Party said in court papers filed yesterday that it has found 300 illegal votes and more than 400 that can't be verified in the governor's election.

With Christine Gregoire winning the governor's race by 129 votes, Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance says he now has found far more than enough evidence to persuade a judge to nullify the election and call for a rematch between Gregoire and Republican Dino Rossi.

Lawyers and Republican staffers are continuing to look county by county for votes cast by felons, in the name of dead people or by people who voted more than once, casting second votes either in other counties or other states.

"I expect this number to literally grow every day," Vance said.

Democrats are unconcerned. Their attorneys have argued that Republicans should have challenged improperly registered voters before the election.

Republicans have identified 240 felons who voted illegally. Party workers have been comparing the state's criminal-history database from the State Patrol to a list of voters kept by the Office of the Secretary of State.

The allegations came as the government intensified security to prevent mourners attending Saturday's funeral in Beijing for Zhao, the former Communist Party secretary general purged for opposing the 1989 military crackdown on the Tiananmen democracy movement.

At least three people, including a woman in her 70s, were punched and manhandled by police officers outside the government offices which receive complaints in the Chinese capital, witnesses said.

They were among some 60 people who pinned white paper flowers to their clothes, a traditional Chinese symbol of mourning, said a bystander who took pictures of the beatings and posted them on overseas websites.

"A man from Henan province was beaten badly. His left eyeball looked like it was beaten out of its socket and he had a one inch cut to his right eye," said the man who requested anonymity.

While Denice Dee Denton, incoming UC-Santa Cruz Chancellor, and other "academics" attack Harvard's Larry Summers in ways typical of an angry, emotional mob, you won't hear a word from them about this outrage.

Free speech is selective on campus.

At least some at Hamilton College have something to say about it:

(Rocky Mountain News)A University of Colorado professor has sparked controversy in New York over an essay he wrote that maintains that people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were not innocent victims.

Students and faculty members at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., have been protesting a speaking appearance on Feb. 3 by Ward L. Churchill, chairman of the CU Ethnic Studies Department.

They are upset over an essay Churchill wrote titled, "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens." The essay takes its title from a remark that black activist Malcolm X made in the wake of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Malcolm X created controversy when he said Kennedy's murder was a case of "chickens coming home to roost."

Churchill's essay argues that the Sept. 11 attacks were in retaliation for the Iraqi children killed in a 1991 U.S. bombing raid and by economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations following the Persian Gulf War. The essay contends the hijackers who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11 were "combat teams," not terrorists.

It states: "The most that can honestly be said of those involved on Sept. 11 is that they finally responded in kind to some of what this country has dispensed to their people as a matter of course."

The essay maintains that the people killed inside the Pentagon were "military targets."

"As for those in the World Trade Center," the essay said, "well, really, let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break."

Addressing a conference on the supposedly insufficient numbers of women in tenured positions in university science departments, he suggested that perhaps part of the explanation might be innate — genetically based — gender differences in cognition. He thought he was speaking in a place that encourages uncircumscribed intellectual explorations. He was not. He was on a university campus.

He was at Harvard, where he is president. Since then he has become a serial apologizer and accomplished groveler. Soon he may be in a Khmer Rouge-style re-education camp somewhere in New England, relearning this: In today's academy, no social solecism is as unforgivable as the expression of a hypothesis that offends someone's "progressive" sensibilities.

Someone like MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins, the hysteric (see above) who, hearing Summers, "felt I was going to be sick. My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow." And, "I just couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill." She said that if she had not bolted from the room, "I would've either blacked out or thrown up."

Is this the fruit of feminism? A woman at the peak of the academic pyramid becomes theatrically flurried by an unwelcome idea and, like a Victorian maiden exposed to male coarseness, suffers the vapors and collapses on the drawing room carpet in a heap of crinolines until revived by smelling salts and the offending brute's contrition.

Hopkins' sufferings, although severe, were not incapacitating: She somehow found strength quickly to share them with The Boston Globe and the "Today" show, on which she confided that she just did not know whether she could bear to have lunch with Summers. But even while reeling from the onslaught of Summers' thought, she retained a flair for meretriciousness: She charged that Summers had said "that 50 percent" of "the brightest minds in America" do not have "the right aptitude" for science.

``Don't despair,'' urged Bush, grinning broadly during a meeting in the Oval Office with the Herald's editorial board.

Bush - who used the term ``Massachusetts liberal'' to jab Sen. John F. Kerry [related, bio] - showed himself to be an avid follower of raucous Massachusetts politics.

Asked how Republicans might be able to break the strong grip that Democrats have had on most elected offices in the Bay State, the president quickly ticked off the names of the past three GOP governors: William F. Weld, Paul Cellucci and Gov. Mitt Romney [related, bio].

``Those are people who won elections in a tough state - which shows it is possible,'' Bush noted.

Bush is friendly with all three. He said he lost a poker game to Weld last time they met. Bush made Cellucci his ambassador to Canada. Romney has been rumored as a potential Cabinet pick.

Probably the mistake here was in not firing them outright, as with Mapes.

Put yourself in their shoes for a moment: you're asked to resign, but under what terms? Will you ever work again? You haven't been terminated and it's a union shop.

On top of that ringleader Dan Rather is still there delivering the news each evening.

Would you quit or fight for every last day of employment? This isn't about sympathy, just what I think is going on behind the scenes.

(New York Post)January 27, 2005 -- THE three CBS News execs asked to resign earlier this month over the embarrassing Memogate scandal still haven't quit. Instead, they've hired lawyers. Unlike veteran producer Mary Mapes — who was fired outright for using bogus documents in a George Bush-bashing Dan Rather report on "60 Minutes" — the three were asked for their resignations. CBS is still waiting. Sources say Josh Howard, Betsy West and Mary Murphy are no longer coming into the office and could be threatening wrongful dismissal lawsuits as they negotiate severance packages. A spokesman said, "CBS refuses to comment on speculation."

Can Mass. Governor Mitt Romney push a state income tax cut through a legislature entirely controlled by the party opposite?

Since Romney has potential 2008 White House plans all eyes will be on him to see what can be accomplished in the circumstances.

So far, he doesn't have much to take to American voters should he become a major GOP presidential contender, but that could change if the numbers work his way in this state budget battle.

(Boston Herald)Gov. Mitt Romney [related, bio] is again pushing for an income tax cut and leading lawmakers, questioning whether the state can afford it, are pushing back.

Rolling out a budget plan yesterday that boosts spending by 2.4 percent, the governor at the same time called for a cut in the income tax rate from 5.3 percent to 5 percent.

With the help of a multi-million dollar windfall resulting from past Medicaid over-budgeting, Romney vowed his $23.2 billion budget would be balanced.

The proposed tax cut will save a married couple with a $60,000 income $146, a single making $50,000 $133, and a family of four making $80,000 about $180.

But Sen. Therese Murray, chairwoman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, said an income tax rollback, which would cost the state more than $400 million annually, is far from a certainly.

``We don't even know if that is doable right now,'' said Murray (D-Plymouth), adding the uncertainty created from the pending Hancock education funding decision and other factors. ``From what we see now, no.''

26 January 2005

*** June 25, 2006 Update: the Radio Equalizer is sorry to hear of Chancellor Denton's passing, after a suicide plunge from a San Francisco highrise. Please check our main page for the latest. Other 2005 coverage can be found here and here. ***

The sleazy nepotism scandal brewing at UC-Santa Cruz involving University of Washington export Denice Dee Denton, newly named UCSC Chancellor, and her partner is now generating national coverage in The Wall Street Journal:

Here's an interesting angle on the Larry Summers kerfuffle. The Santa Cruz (Calif.) Sentinel notes that one of the Harvard president's harshest foes is Denice Dee Denton, the new chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz:

Denton is making headlines . . . for challenging controversial statements made by Harvard University President Larry Summers, who suggested that innate differences between the sexes could help explain why fewer women succeed in science and math careers.

Summers made the comments . . . at an economic conference attended by Denton. Denton questioned Summers sharply during the conference, saying she needed to "speak truth to power." She told the Harvard president that she believed his assertions had been contradicted by research materials presented at the conference.

The Sentinel reports that the alliterative administrator has taken a very personal interest in the advancement of female scientists:

The University of California created a $192,000-a-year job for the partner of the new UC Santa Cruz chancellor, a move that is being criticized by employee unions. . . .

Proving my contention that liberals never forgive or forget their enemies, even years later, a Boston Globe columnist launched into seeming character assassination against a pioneering taxcutting activist in Massachusetts. From MassRight:

I fail to find words to encapsulate the depth of my disgust and contempt at the author of this hatchet-job from the Boston Globe.

And "hatchet-job" fails to describe the profound and disturbing depths to which this article sinks in using innuendo and hearsay in attempting to construe that Mr. Hyatt, architect of Prop 2 1/2, is, when all is said and done, a homeless, dirty, paranoid schizophrenic (with religious ideation), in repeated legal trouble, wandering the streets and occasionally posting "bizarrely" to his website.

The more I contemplate the article, the deeper my disturbance. Either this article is an attempt to smear one man in just such a way as he is incapable of striking back (and, with the same brush, smear by construction the entire religious conservative movement as equally crazy, but not showing it yet), or it is yet another kick in a series of kicks at a downtrodden and by even this account, repeatedly ill-used figure.

Northwest liberals have been in a state of denial since 9-11. Between discounting future threats and blaming the attacks on US foreign policy, they've had to get more and more creative in their efforts to convince others there is no future terrorist threat.

Or if there is, the Bush Administration isn't doing enough about it, or they're doing too much, boy, I just can't keep up with their everchanging spin on the issue these days.

Here's fresh evidence that Eugene, Portland, Seattle and Olympia lefties can cook up new excuses for, or ignore, the choice is theirs:

The FBI knows of "jihadists" who have trained in terrorist camps in Afghanistan and are now living in Oregon, the agency's Oregon chief said in an interview with The Associated Press yesterday.

"We don't have an imminent threat that we're aware of. But I will say this: We have people here in Oregon that have trained in jihadist camps in bad areas. In the bad neighborhoods of the world," said FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Jordan.

During the session with The AP, which lasted nearly two hours, Jordan discussed a wide range of themes — from his agents' participation in the Bush administration's war on terrorism to the upcoming opening of a Portland laboratory for forensic work on computers seized from suspects.

Jordan refused to say how many "jihadists" live in Oregon.

He said the FBI knows "they've trained overseas, taken oaths to kill Americans and engage in jihad," but the challenge is "to prove those things."

I agree, liberal radio will never sustain itself. That is because the majority of people voting democratic don't have long attention spans. They aren't news junkies. I know democrats and they just don't follow the news. They do remember slogans. They do remember half truths (just read the liberal columns - they are filled with half truths).

The democratic politicians know this. They cater to the less intelligent. They prefer the mob. They appeal to the lower tendencies such as envy. They use slogans and half truths to get these non-thinkers all riled up. Democratic politicians are the new rabble rousers. People with half a brain can see this.

Obviously I can't just label all democratic voters idiotic but I wish there was a way to expose democratic politician's efforts to manipulate the less discerning. It is interesting the phrase "rabble rouser" is not used anymore and has not been replaced by an equivalent. Please keep exposing the liberal liars.

Philip N

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Your excellent article on "progressive radio" (read socialist) was very interesting. However, the main thing that has caused what I call "truth radio" (conservative talk) to grow is that finally the facts are being made available to the working, small business private sector, of the country.

Prior to the advent of Rush, only Bob Grant was available to the citizenry of the N.Y. Metro area. Consequently, the only data that was available to the public was "the networks", the I'd Rathers, Ted Koppouts, Jerkey Jennings and "Mac" Donaldsons of the world.

Lets take just one large droning mantra of the Socialist Radio Network (Hair America), that Co2 is a greenhouse gas.

#1: Since the 1940's the population of the Earth has doubled from three to six billion. Every one of these humans are exhaling Co2, and making methane as well (don't blame the cows!)

They are also consuming twice the amount of every thing that grows on the planet as well, burning wood for cooking, demanding MORE fossil fuels, which they burn daily, and overfishing the seas.

The amount of erroneous rhetoric that is spewed forth by the socialists is overwhelming to a citizenry that has paid billions for "education" that has made the youth of the country basically ignorant.

On top of that the billion or so paid to "macademia", (academia, has become a bunch of nuts, therefore macademia) to study global warming, it becomes obvious that no institution of "higher learning" would be likely to give up that much grant money if the public were to become aware this was based on no real facts at all, just more data of the same type that got "I'd Rather " in trouble along with "Mapes the Mouth".

So if Mr Franken truly believes this data on global warming he and his ilk can solve the problem by simply ceasing to manufacture "greenhouse gasses" from either end and "save the planet" by the most noble thing anyone who truly has the courage of their own convictions to do, cease to exist.

Professor Obvious

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re: air america radio

i will bet you that after bush makes enough people poor, makes enough sons and daughters dead from the iraq invasion, and enough people wake up to the lies of the right wing drug addicts like rush and sex perverts like o'reilly and the felons like liddy-liberal talk radio is going to knock the lies and the hate mongering of the above mentioned straight to hell.

eventually, people who are really in their hearts christians want people uplifted, not dragged down.

i can't wait.

karin

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So, after getting your ass run off here in Seattle, you can sit there and
try to trash Progressive Radio?

You should have been a comedian - you make me laugh.

What you've left out of your WND piece is the fact that there are a lot of
lousy conservative radio shows that barely make a blip on the radar. Ed
Shultz and Randi Rhoades are hardly new to the air waves, and they are
picking up steam every week. Sure, they are no where near where Limbaugh
and Hannity are right now, but given time they will be up there.

Yes, there are some posers on Air America, and they will probably go by the
wayside as AAR continues to grow. There are many successful progressive
talk shows out there on a local level that may eventually syndicate to AAR.

Conservatives have been trying to convince us that "liberal radio" will
never work. Apparently they are wrong, because it is working. Don't make
the mistake that just because AAR is not up to the same level as Premiere
right now that they won't eventually get there.

Radio needs the diversity AAR offers. Over 50 million people proved that on
November 2nd.

David

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When it comes to ratings on left-wing newscasts, radio shows, web sites,
etc., I always wonder how much of the audience is made up of their
opponents just keeping an eye or ear on them to be able to counter what
they say. The smaller the audience, the larger an impact on the ratings
that the watchdogs would make ...

Lloyd
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Hey Brian

Hope you're weathering the snowstorm this weekend.

It was good to read about the phenomenon of progressive talk radio in your column, 1/22.

A small point on Ed Schultz: he is produced and syndicated by Democracy Radio; while Jones Radio Networks distributes the show.